Sharing Animation - Sisyphus (Marcell Jankovics, 1974)

For this week (or last week, I'm still one week behind =P) sharing animation I'll post some art.

I'm a true lover of the fluid, detailed, precise animation, such as well done traditional animation and 3D animation. But another part of animation that I love is mainly notable in tradicional animation, for obvious artistic freedom reasons, and are the metamorphosis (have I done this speech before? I feel I have...).

So this week I come to you with a very short short, that has an incredible development throughout the narrative, as the original sisyphus myth also have (For the curious, Wikipedia: The Myth of Sisyphus) and the metamorphosis develops aswell, in my opinion, in a very charming way. The short received an Oscar nomination.

The artist is Marcell Jankovics and the animation is called, as you might have guessed, Sisyphus. You can google the artist to know more about him since he doesn't have any official website.

It's very simple but yet very powerful.

So please enjoy, Sisyphus by Marcell Jankovics.

Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!

See you next week for another powerful artnimation!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

Sharing Animation - The Monk and The Fish (Michael Dudok De Wit, 1994)

Do you remember my second post in this sharing animations? If you haven't seen it yet, you can look for it in the Sharing Animation Tab (where you can find a list of all the animations I've shared so far) or you can go to the Sharing Animation Label (where you can see all the posts I've shared with inspirational animation till date)!

So this week I'm here with another Michael Dudok De Wit animation called The Monk and the Fish (Le Moine et le poisson), a 1994 awarded animation!

This beautiful animation won the first Cartoon d'Or award for Dudok De Wit, and also won the Cesar (an important French award) and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.

The music wonderfully achieved by Serge Besset really gives the right mood to it!

Here you go, another masterpiece from this genius in his art!

Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!

See you next week for another amazing piece of animation!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

Sharing Animation - Seiltänzer (Raimund Krumme, 1986)

I'm so late!

My life with university and all is very busy, so I've been skipping the weekly animations, and I feel that's just wrong.

So for this half week late animation sharing I come to you with a very "simple" project, but yet full of life. The name is Seiltanzer by the award-winning German director, Raimund Krumme. It was his first original animation, in 1986.

The simple lines and design are very caracteristic of Krumme. Also the way he play with the lines and with metamorphosis can be widely seen in his work.

I tried but I couldn't manage to find an official website for the artist, but HERE and HERE you can see some info about him in the AWN website, and HERE you can see some more info in the ACME filmworks website.

I personally love when animation keeps surprising us in terms of material and space relation of the objects. In this piece, a simple hand-drawn square can be a lot of different things!

Nothing better than you watch it! Enjoy, Seiltanzer by Raimund Krumme.

Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!

See you next week (erm... I mean, this week!) for another impressive and surprising animation!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

Sharing Animation - Ring of Fire (Andreas Hykade, 2000)

For this week Sharing Animation I come to you with an short animation with a very particular graphism. In fact, the artist himself has a very particular style.

Andreas Hykade is a well recognised animator who created quite a few awarded animations. And the one I'm going to share today (surely there will be more in the future)  is Ring of Fire, released in 2000.

This short has a complex mood, with it's color or lack of it, the voiceover, the story. It all come together greatly as a unified whole.

It was animated by Andreas Hykade himself, along with Ged Haney and Anita Ortega. The short was made in Coprodution with Studio FILM BILDER.

In spite of the crude images, the short has a very well thought meaning and story, and the whole animation is a thrill to watch.

HERE you can find Andreas Hykade's official website, where you can find his biography and the info about some other productions he has been part of.

Enjoy this awesome animation, Ring of Fire by Andreas Hykade.

Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!

See you next week for another animation!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

Sharing Animation - Day & Night (Teddy Newton - Pixar Animation Studios, 2010)

Last week I couldn't find the time to come here and post the sharing animation post. So I figured I could share a recent and very well known animation that is a hell of a good one!

So just quickly sharing the incredible 2010 Pixar short Day & Night, directed by Teddy Newton.

The mix of tradicional animation with CG for me is one of the best things about this short, because it really shows how animation is, in fact, what this is all about. It doesn't matter what technique we're dealing with, the important thing is that you know how to animate so you can make an incredible film!

I just think this should be in this sharing collection. A big congrats for the Pixar team!






Here's a video from Pixar talking a little bit about the short!
Enjoy!

Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

Sharing Animation - Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones - Warner Bros. Cartoons, 1953)

Hello Again!

For this week's animation sharing I'll be adding a very well known cartoon to the list! Until now I've been sharing animations that are mostly author's works, but today I come with a big studio cartoon that is very cool for the animation studies and research!

The animations is the 1953 Duck Amuck, directed by Chuck Jones, written by Michael Maltese, voiced by Mel Blanc and produced by Warner Bros. Cartoons.

This is so special because it's an animation that talks about animation itself. There's nothing like the creators wanting to show the rest of the world how a cartoon, and such a distinctive personality from a cartoon character, are made. It's very cool to distinguish the different types of artists and professionals that an animated film requires. And Chuck Jones did that wonderfully in this animation.

HERE you can find it's IMDB page. HERE the WB's offical web site and HERE the WB cartoon collection's web page.

It's a very entertaining and joyful piece, so enjoy!

Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!

See you next week for another awesome animation!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

Sharing Animation - David (Paul Driessen, 1977)

This week I'm presenting yet a different artist than the ones before. And also a very different animation itself.

When you see the drawing made by Paul Driessen you may thing that they are rough and not solid at all. You can see that he may have difficulties in his drawing. But the great thing about this artist is that he takes that rough drawing as granted and explores it to make his own style!

Paul Driessen has indeed his very own style that many have also explored. His simplicity is compensated with his story telling, composition of the whole film and even his remarkable and unique animation.

The 1977 animation David was the first Driessen animation I've seen, and it amazed me by it's simplicity in animation that, as you'll see, there isn't much. But still it's a short film worth watching. It's a wonderful film for and about little people.

HERE you can see Driessen's official website.

So enjoy this very amusing piece, David by Paul Driessen:




"Isn't it horrible, my boy? How easily big creatures spoil the lives of the small?... Crunch!"

Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!

See you next week for another great animation!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

Sharing Animation - Every Child (Eugene Fedorenko, 1980)

Once again a National Film Board of Canada short film. An awarded one aswell. This fantastic short won the academy award for best animated short.

This is Every Child by Eugene Fedorenko.

I think the greatest thing about this animation is the soundtrack. The animation itself is humorous and well thought and done, but the sound design is done in such a way that's just delightful to watch and hear the whole thing. Just because all the sounds are done with voice by Les Mimes Eléctriques, a pair of voice masters! They are the two men that appear in the beggining and end of the short. You can google them.

This is to celebrate the Unicef's Declaration of Children's Rights. And so it has a astonishing theme behind it.

The animation has influenced my work no only because of the trembling lines that goes along the whole animation, but also, of course, because of the sound design, which I want to use the same style in an animation of my own.

So here it is, without further ado, this very funny short animation I want to share this week, by Eugene Fedorenko:

Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!

See you next week for another engaging animation!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

Sharing Animation - Mindscape (Jacques Drouin, 1976)

This week I'm coming to you with an animation that when I first saw it, when I understood what I was watching, it completely blew my mind!

The name of the animation is Le Paysagiste (Mindscape, the english name) by Jacques Drouin.

I tried for a while to look for videos that talk about this unbelievable animation technique, so before you see this animation you could actually see the process, but I couldn't find any proper video. You can scroll along this video HERE, where Drouin himself is talking (in french) and he has a pinscreen behind him and he sometimes shows something in it. I've watched a wonderful one that I just couldn't find.

Taken from the wikipedia, I found it quite right: "A pinscreen is a white screen that consists of thousands and thousands of pins in small holes. Light shines from the side of this platform causing each and every single pin to cast its own shadow. Each pin, being able to slide easily back and forth through the holes, can cast different shadows. The white screen becomes darker the farther the pins are pushed out. The more the pins are pushed in, the lighter the screen becomes, giving a grayish tone and eventually an all white screen again."

It's really a macro sized thing that can have the whole grey, black and white scale almost perfectly. The pins are so small that you almost can't see them, you just see the gradient.

So as for animation: imagine you push a group of pins until that part of the screen is white, you take a picture and then you have to go to the back of the screen push those pins out again so you can have the white area in a different place, to have the movement when you take a picture again.

Maybe you can imagine that it's a pretty difficult technique! And so this beautiful work I bring to you today it's even more spectacular.
The technique is amazing enough but Drouin managed to make a real master piece out of it!

The best video I found was in the very National Film Board of Canada website, watch it in High Quality, wait it to load, it's totaly worth it. Although the standard is quite watchable it High Quality takes too long.
So here it is, Mindscape by Jacques Drouin.

Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!

See you next week with another incredible animation!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

My Animations - Five

Here is another project I've been working on.

This is a 20 seconds part of a whole 5 minutes animation project (the biggest I've ever written so far). This semester in university we had to write, storyboard, test, change, test, change again, etc, and make 20 seconds of one big animation. It's a pity that during the semester I don't actually have to finish all the projects I start, since here we were learning to create, produce, direct, and all the rest, a whole short, and one semester is not enough time to finish it.
I see that this is good for learning, but the truth is that I end up with a bunch of unfinished works. When we are done starting and developing it through it's first steps, we already have another project to do, so we kinda have to let the last one as it is. But who knows, right? Maybe in the future, if I manage to make the time, I'll finish it!

This was done in tradicional animation, digitally painted in photoshop. The background has a paper texture. It has an intended rigid and trembled animation style, not at all like Disney's animations.

In very short, the story is about the greed for power and recognition among a society. The five characters, the society, all start as equals, but by various reasons and motivations their importance in the group vary and a hierarchy of recognition is created. With hierarchy comes social difference and more power to some means less power to others. In the end it's a game of power and greed among them, the society that quickly forgets that they were all equals.

This 20 second part (really the introduction and the beginning of the whole thing) shows how the first one emerge just by having the initiative to find food. He would start eating it and the others, showing hunger, would respect him and allow him to be their leader in exchange for food. Since it's an important factor for life the others will respect him for being the provider. So he'll be the first one to grow in the eyes of the society, and in the animation he would physically grow.

Ow, and the name was not quite chosen yet. Five because there's five of them! =P

Sharing Animation - Next (Barry Purves, 1989)

For this (late) week animation sharing I bow to a very very good master stop-motion puppets animator. He has some other incredible works and I'll definetely talk more about him in the future.

But today I come with the one called Next, from the respectable master animator, Barry Purves.

Next was the first animation written and directed (aswell as animated) by Purves, released in 1989. After many years animating for others, he engaged himself in this very ambicious project and I call it ambicious because he chose to represent the "Complete Works" (37 stories) of William Shakespeare in an empty stage, exploring, in his words, body language, taking the puppet to it's limit.

It's amazing to watch how Purves makes many of his animations as actual theater's plays. His use of the stage as the only scenary and the front camera really makes us, viewers, feel as in a theater. But animations are real plays, they are all carefully staged and rehearsed, and we actually are viewers sitting down and watching it. He just makes the connection between animation and real acting even more obvious. No wonder he works in real plays aswell.

Click HERE to access his official website.

His latest animation is called Tchaikovsky. I'm certainly dying to watch it. HERE and HERE you can watch a teaser and the trailer.

So here it is, Next by Barry Purves:

Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!

See you next week for another incredible play!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

Sharing Animation - The Old Man And The Sea (Alexander Petrov, 1999)

For this week's Sharing Animation piece, I brought to you one that has amazed me since I first glanced it. So I'll start by saying that it is amazing!

This was done in one of the most difficult types of animation of all, paint on glass. In my oppinion it's such a hard craft that few can actually make it look good. And this incredible painter, this incredible artist, certainly made it.

As some of you may have already guessed, the animation is The Old Man and the Sea, by the, once more, incredible russian Alexander Petrov.

Now there isn't much to say, just watch. The story is beautiful and the graphism even more beautiful. It took two and a half years of tireless work to complete, and looking at the awards that it picked up, it was worth it. Besides the Academy Award Best Animated Short Film Oscar, The Old Man and The Sea won several other awards.

HERE you can find a video where Petrov talks a little bit about this animation and it's dubbed in english. HERE (part 1) and HERE (part 2) you can find another two videos where Petrov is talking about his work flow. It's in russian, so I couldn't understand a word! =) But it's still pretty cool to watch how Petrov makes some frames of the movie (more or less at the end of part 1 and the beginning of part 2), his drawings for the storyboard and some reference images he took for Old man and the sea.

So here is the master piece (in English), please enjoy:

Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!

See you next week for one more incredible inspirational animation!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

My Animations - Rotoscope

This week I made a Rotoscopy animation exercise! It took me about 16 hours to make this 29 second, and was completely made in Flash.

It was actually my first try rotoscoping, and I'm quite pleased with the result. I wanted to make a sort of cinema history, so I started with some classic shots of some old films. A thought is to continue this project and add more classic films that I've watched to this animation.

I wanted it a black and white rotoscopy, somewhat like a sketch book, adding some color in details (the tongue and the dancing bread).

The movies added are 1902 - A Trip to The Moon and 1925 - The Gold Rush

After a while I thought it would be nice to add some detail to it, so I thought adding the smoke texture as I've done in my Music Abstraction animation.

One thing I can say, I definitely rather do "real" animation than rotoscoping! =)

Sharing Animation - Manipulation (Daniel Greaves, 1991)

I always loved animations that not only tells a narrative but also talks about animation itself. Animations that really show the process, the making of, the material, the essence of animation and present it in a way that it seems we're looking at the animator doing his job!

And on top of all that, what makes the "Illusion of life", persued by all animations, more real then having the life form creation interacting with his creator, the animator? There are tons of animations interacting with his creator, but this one is certainly one of the bests, if only for winning the 1992 Oscar for the best animated short.

The british author, name: Daniel Greaves, and his award winner piece, name: Manipulation.

Here it is, the very amusing animation:

Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!

See you next week for yet another awesome piece of animation!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

Animag 2011 Funny Animation Retrospective

Animation Magazine made a funny 2011 kind of Comic Book page with some of the animations that impressed during last year. I thought it was really cool to share with everyone! Of course, credit: Animag!!

Awesome stuff!!